Living a multi-purpose life as a Christian is the focus of this ariticle.

1. A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL
On my windowsill sits a calendar made up of cards with beautiful pictures
of people from Bangladesh. The reverse side contains a postcard, and thus
there are twelve dual-purpose monthly cards. I want my life to be patterned
after the calendar/postcards: dual-purpose service to my Savior and Lord,
Jesus Christ. “How about you?” my Japanese students ask when they direct
the question the other way. How about you? Is your life dual purpose?
Of course, I don’t have all the answers to make each person’s life dual
purpose(only the Holy Spirit can reveal the best route for you), but I can
give examples in my own life. Not that I have arrived, as the Apostle Paul
stated, but from my examples I believe you can extrapolate and make a
bigger impact in the world with the Gospel.
First of all, as I have already stated, I teach Japanese students who want
to learn English: I am a tentmaker in Tokyo. Most of my coworkers come
from different English speaking nations and are not Christians. Also, the
majority of my students are Buddhists and/or Shintoists. I am a covert
evangelist getting paid a pretty good wage to share my faith as I felt led.
In a country with such a small percentage of Christians this is an important
task even among my coteachers who have the potential of affecting many
nonchristians in their lifetimes.
What’s astounding is that I am being paid to do this. I am not draining
missions’ funds from frontier Gospel ventures but even able to add finances
to those endeavors. Because I am involved with a mission which supports
national ministries in developing countries, I can greatly advance God’s
kingdom with contributions while being a missionary myself. The potential
in this direction alone is huge.
Another area of possible ministry is my local church which has Japanese
services in the morning and an English service in the evening. At the
Japanese service I shared about the outreach supporting national ministries.
In addition, many of the people attending the English service are Nigerians.
Their praise songs have been a real blessing to me, and I have been trying to
bless them in return by giving away Christian books and music.
Those same kinds of materials have also been sent to many places
throughout the world after I have used them for my own spiritual edification.
Christian novels often go into mainland China, Japanese university libraries

2. or even to libraries in the Middle East. Other Christian materials usually go
to various ministries worldwide.
Lastly, since I have been in Japan, I have been able to evangelize a few
of the thousands of Iranians here with tapes and booklets from Gospel
Recordings and Multi-Language Media, respectively. A short time back an
Iranian gave his heart to the Lord at my church. This is, I believe, reaching
an unreached peoples group in Japan.
Ezekial 1:16 speaks about creatures near the throne of God with a wheel
within a wheel. Making an analogy to our lives with these creatures is not
too far-fetched. Perhaps, we can also serve the Lord by being wheels within
wheels of service until we exponentially reach the ends of the earth with the
Gospel.
Note: This article was written some years ago, and since that time Craig
Dressler has taught in the Middle East and is still involved with supporting
national ministries mostly by supplying scriptures to them through
Unreached Peoples’ Missions. If you would like to contact him about
speaking engagements or about supporting Unreached Peoples’ Missions,
he can be reached at cwdupm@yahoo.com.